Academics: Which LACs and Universities Come Out On Top?

[Agent_of_Sense]

<p>Exactly. Mondo is free to rank schools the way he wants, since it is subjective. I mean, there's a whole, rank your favorite Ivy thread every week (or it's the same one that people keep posting on, whatever haha). The only wrong part is that, as I stated before, he's trying to convey his basis for his rankings as objective, hard facts (like selectivity, etc.), not opinion. I think that makes sense, right?</p>

<p>P.S. Harvard sucks. UChicago rocks! lol :P my opinion</p>

<p>no but really, they're both great.</p>

[Agent_of_Sense]

<p>P.S. Harvard sucks. UChicago rocks! lol :P my opinion</p>

[johnwesley]

<p>middsmith - there's nothing cheap about it. they are both quite blatant attempts to crack jokes at your expense. And, Michael Bay and I are both awesome. :D</p>

[noobcake]

<p>Less subjective rankings needed on CC</p>

[arcadia]

<p>
[quote]
Middlebury, as I understand, has a lower test score average than the other schools you mentioned.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Not entirely true. Middlebury's SAT I scores are slightly lower than some of the schools you mention, but Midd also is SAT I optional, but reports scores for all matriculating students, regardless of whether they were used in admissions. Midd's ACT scores are comparable to Williams, Swarthmore, and Amherst.</p>

<p>Furthermore, Middlebury is one of only 18 colleges or universities in the US that have an acceptance rate of less than 30 percent and a yield rate of 38 percent or higher. In fact, Middlebury's acceptance rate was 18% this year, and 86% of matriculating freshmen were in the top 10% of their h.s. class. I could go on and on, but I think you get the point.</p>

<p>Then again, it's your ranking, so I'll simply make my case and move along.</p>

[arcadia]

<p>Check out this new ranking (which is probably as arbitrary as yours). It's not clear what metrics this person is using to define selectivity, but here you go:</p>

<p>Top</a> 100 Colleges - Ranked By Selectivity | Admission Sync</p>

[hawkette]

<p>From College Pr** owler, here are their rankings for academics:</p>

<p>A+ Grade </p>

<p>National Universities: Caltech, U Chicago, Dartmouth, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Williams</p>

<p>Liberal Arts Colleges: Bowdoin, Harvey Mudd, Williams</p>

<p>A Grade </p>

<p>National Universities: Brown, Carnegie Mellon, W&M, Columbia, Duke, Harvard, Northwestern, Rice, Tufts, U Penn, U Rochester, Vanderbilt, Yale</p>

<p>Liberal Arts Colleges: Amherst, Bard, Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Carleton, Claremont McKenna, Davidson, Macalester, Middlebury, Oberlin, Pomona, Reed, Scripps, Smith, Swarthmore, Vassar, W&L, Wellesley</p>

<p>A- Grade </p>

<p>National Universities: Brandeis, Case Western, Clark, Cornell, Emory, Georgetown, Georgia Tech, J Hopkins, Notre Dame, UC Berkeley, UCLA, U Michigan, USC, U Virginia, Wash U</p>

<p>Liberal Arts Colleges: Bates, Colby, Colgate, Colorado College, Connecticut College, Grinnell, Hamilton, Haverford, Kenyon, Lawrence, Trinity, Wesleyan</p>

[Bourne]

<p>
[quote]
Check out this new ranking (which is probably as arbitrary as yours). It's not clear what metrics this person is using to define selectivity, but here you go:</p>

<p>Top 100 Colleges - Ranked By Selectivity | Admission Sync

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Chicago is 45th. </p>

<p>Enough said.</p>

[johnwesley]

<p>The 2008 Howard Hughes Medical Institute grantees (by alphabetical order):
Amherst
Barnard
Bowdoin
Bryn Mawr
Cal State - Fullerton
Calvin College
Carleton
CUNY - Hunter
Colby
Colgate
College of Wooster
Davidson
Drew
Furman
Georgetown (KY)
Gonzaga
Grinnell
Gustavas Adolphus College
Hampton
Harvey Mudd
Haverford
Hope
Kalamazoo
Lewis & Clark
Morehouse
Mount Holyoke
North Carolina Central
Oakwood College
Occidental
St. Joseph's College
Smith
Spelman
Swarthmore
U of Louisiana - Monroe
U of Puerto Rico - Mayaguez
U of Richmond
U of Texas - Pan American
Vassar
Washington & Jefferson
Washington & Lee
Wellesley
Wesleyan
Whitman
Wilkes University
<a href="http://www.hhmi.org/news/college20080422_list.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.hhmi.org/news/college20080422_list.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

[middsmith]

<p>
[quote]
middsmith - there's nothing cheap about it. they are both quite blatant attempts to crack jokes at your expense. And, Michael Bay and I are both awesome.

[/quote]

It is cheap because they were on threads I don't follow. Then through this thread, I realized this guy was throwing darts at me, tracked back 20 or so posts and voila, I found 2. Anyway, a little search and here's something in response to your 2008 Howard Hughes Medical Institute grantees. Looks like you just have to apply and follow the guidelines to get this grant. </p>

<p>Blown</a> HHMI Grant? EphBlog</p>

<p>
[quote]
A knowledgeable Eph writes:

[quote]
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HMMI) is the largest private sponsor of science research in the country and, by far, the largest benefactor of science research at undergrad colleges. In the five multi-year cycles since 1991, Williams has never missed a major grant: 1991, 1993, 1996, 2000, 2004. In 2004, Williams received the largest four-year grant $1.6 million.</p>

<p>HMMI announced the 48 winners of four-year grants in the next cycle yesterday. Look who is missing.</p>

<p>Wendy Raymond is the HMMI project coordinator at Williams. I have no idea what happened, but for one of the top LACs to not get one of these awards is hard to imagine. Somebody either forgot to submit the proposal, or submitted a godawful proposal, or failed to do the proper follow-up and butt-kissing reporting about the fantastic accomplishments from 2004’s $1.6 million grant.</p>

<p>Got any contacts in the Science Departments? Probably an interesting story.

[/quote]

Indeed. Comments?</p>

<p>Certainly, any non-racists would agree that it is more important for Raymond to spend her time working as Associate Dean for Institutional Diversity (e.g., this) rather than worrying about multi-million dollar grants.</p>

<p>UPDATE: Title corrected. Curious as to what it takes to get your HHMI grant extended? Me too! Consider Swarthmore and Amherst. Both seem to have spent HHMI’s money in useful and productive ways. So, they will get more money to spend. (Anyone with more knowledge about HHMI is welcome to comment.) Williams, on the other hand, seems to have wasted the money in a parody of PC preening.

[quote]
While Williams College’s HHMI program has successfully initiated student research and curricular partnership with Bennett College, we have been unable to initiate Williams-Bennett faculty research partnerships to date. Multiple factors have contributed to this challenge. First, the physical distance and lack of non-stop flights between Bennett (in Greensboro, NC) and Williams (in Williamstown, MA) prohibit ready travel. Second, since the Williams-HHMI partnership was agreed to without input from the Bennett faculty, winning Bennett faculty buy-in to these opportunities continues to take time and patience. Third, most Bennett faculty members are not research-active, and they are stretched thinly by strenuous teaching responsibilities. Though HHMI funding would provide generous stipend, travel, and lodging funds to make summer research partnerships at Williams possible, this has not been enough to entice faculty members to give up even one or two weeks of their summer. Fourth, two Bennett faculty members considering the program soon left Bennett. Finally, Bennett and Williams liaisons now agree that such partnerships require annual visits to Bennett by one or more Williams faculty members. Though such visits have been made twice in the first three years of the grant, and two Bennett faculty members visited Williams in 2005, this has not been enough.

[/quote]

Glad to see that Professor Raymond is willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in such a flawed exercise. Why won’t HMMI give her more money? Can’t they see that Wendy Raymond likes black people?! And shouldn’t that be the primary criteria by which grant money is allocated?</p>

<p>Now, to be fair, it could be that Raymond spent the HMMI money in exactly the way that she proposed four years ago. It could be that she promised pointless PC preening and then made it happen. It could be that no one could have done any better. And it could be that it is just the vagaries of the grant-making process — perhaps conservatives have taken over HHMI? — which have deprived Williams of more money. Perhaps the only thing that Raymond promised four years ago is that she would leverage HMMI money into a reduced teaching load for herself and more diversity gibberish for the College. If so, she has delivered!</p>

<p>But if I were a Williams science faculty member who used to have use HHMI funding to support my students, I would want to know what the heck happened . . .</p>

<p>UPDATE II: Goodness gracious! Here is what Williams proposed to do with HMMI’s money back in 2004. Did Williams (read: Raymond) fail to deliver on what was promised or go off the reservation entirely? [Racist! -- ed. You know where to report me.] Answer: both! Williams/Raymond both failed to promote “collaborative research between Williams faculty and faculty from other institutions” and did not even seem to try to expand “outreach initiatives at local K-6 schools.” Or, even worse, Williams did engage in these outreach initiatives (right?) but then failed to inform HHMI that it had done so.</p>

<p>Someone’s got some splaining to do! [More racism! -- ed.]

[/quote]
</p>

[johnwesley]

<p>thanks, middsmith. I knew I could count on you. Now, what's Middlebury's excuse? :p</p>

[TheGFG]

<p>A question: when these lists of top-ranked schools include USC, is that University of Southern Calif. or University of South Carolina? I remember there was a thread on CC not too long ago about up and coming schools which have really improved their ranking in the last few years, and again USC was mentioned as one that improved a tremendous amount. Which one is it?</p>

[arcadia]

<p>
[quote]
Now, what's Middlebury's excuse?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Our coffers are so overflowing with money that we don't need no stinkin' HHMI grant. Just kidding. Not sure Midd even applied.</p>

[quaere]

<p>TheGFG, USC almost always refers to University of Southern California - at least on CC.</p>

<p>Slightly off-topic, but here's something I'm curious about. In almost every college ranking schematic, selectivity is highly emphasized (test scores, high school GPAs, acceptance rate). I understand the logic behind this: the schools with the best academic offerings will be the most competitive and attract the most highly accomplished students. At the same time, it's an indirect and almost self-perpetuating way of measuring academic quality. And there's something about it that just doesn't make sense. Measuring the caliber of a school based on the quality of students who enter is like judging a hospital based on the health of the patients that it admits, rather than the ones who are discharged. It would make more sense to focus on the actual educational opportunities provided at the school, and the end results of this educational process, rather than using students' high school accomplishments to judge the quality of the colleges they choose.</p>

<p>So, with that in mind: are there any ranking systems that are based on academic factors other than admissions stats and selectivity? For example, accomplishments of faculty, average class sizes, resources dedicated to student research, graduate school acceptance rates, receipt of prestigious awards/grants/fellowships, or even scores on GREs/MCATs/LSATS? Would this be a better idea? And would the same schools come out on top?</p>

[TheGFG]

<p>quaere: You make a valid point. Shouldn't the measure of a good school be one which produces the greatest transformation in its students? On a similar thread a while back, I commented that the Ivies seem more like finishing schools now--you have to already be super-educated and super-accomplished to get in, so there's not as much work to do for HYPS et al. as there is for the state univ. Many HYPS admits have already completed 2-3 years of college-level courses in high school, have done cutting edge research while still a teenager, etc. and so even if they learn very little while in college, they will still be better prepared than the average joe after 4 years. But what does that prove? Education is a low risk enterprise for the elite schools--they only have to put a few decorative touches on their students and hand them a diploma and they're ready to go to work. People will take note of the pedigree and assume the best. Not that most admits don't take full advantage of the education offered, but the point is they wouldn't have to do that and would still be successful. Can the same be said for other schools?</p>

[middsmith]

<p>Think of colleges as Linear Time Invariant system, it cannot alter input signal frequency. If the students are dumb, they can't be transformed. What you pointed out is almost a paradox.
Colleges can only facilitate students' learning.</p>